Lord of the Robins
by JukeBoxBandit
Summary: When an enterprising corporation builds a gateway to Middle Earth with the intention of plundering the worlds untapped natural resources, Robin is out of luck. There was nothing Robin loved more than involuntary interdimensional travel. He was absolutely delighted to be thrown through a portal into another world filled with Dwarves, Elves, and cranky old men. Just his cup of tea.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue: Is it Rude to Wear a Tux in the Jungle?

Despite the legion of mercenaries with automatic weapons surrounding Robin, he couldn't help but wonder at the functionality of their uniforms. Sure, they were stylish and intimidating - what villain wouldn't want to imposing looking soldiers - but they seemed entirely wrong for the setting. Peruvian jungle wilderness and classical tuxedos don't tend to go hand in hand, but who was Robin to judge; he was wearing tights.

This seemed the wrong time and place to discuss clothing choices, however, given the imminent death that awaited the young man if he stood still for too long. It was one against fourteen and wouldn't be easy, but Robin had faced worse odds.

Leaping upward, Robin grasped a branch and swung forward, throwing his full weight towards the front line of men.

Soldiers toppled like bowling pins, and the vigilante rolled to his feet, sprinting away as fast as his legs would carry him. The dense undergrowth and unfamiliar terrain hindered his progress. He had grown up in a concrete jungle, not a plant-based one, after all.

Behind him, the sounds of rallying men and gunfire grew ever closer, and Robin scanned the trees, desperate for some way to evade the soldiers and their offending fashion.

His breath rattled in his chest and the thick jungle miasma made footing precarious. The nimble boy almost twisted his ankle once or twice as he dove through the bushes, saved only by the grace of lady luck and adrenaline.

"The jungle is no place for a little birdie!" bellowed a voice from the pursuing crowd of men. "Little birds get eaten by snakes."

Um, can you say "creepy"? Robin was entirely nonplussed by this disturbing wordplay and gave a breathless chuff of dismissal as he ran, rolling his eyes in habitual disdain.

Big. Fat. Mistake.

Turns out, when running at top speed through ill-lit tropical forests, it was a bad idea to roll one's eyes and remove focus from the path in front. This was a truth Robin discovered a little too late.

With a yelp, he tumbled forward, tool belt over tea kettle, through the sticks and seemingly illogical number of rocks that lined the jungle floor.

Robin crashed through the brambled, cursing whoever had introduced gravity to his life, and doing his best to avoid serious injury. Through some divine lottery, he splashed into a small pond at the base of the slope, spluttering, and cursing.

Yum: mud water, Robin's favorite.

This day had been had enough, to begin with, but being plunged into bacteria teeming pond scum at 50 mph really took the crappy-cake.

"If I hadn't taken that stinkin' kids advice, I wouldn't be in this mess!" thought Robin, clambering to his feet continuing his sprint through the jungle.

But it was too late now, and he HAD taken the bad advice, and there was nowhere to go but forward. Preferably away from the thugs rapidly gaining on him.

His heart raced almost as fast as his feet slapped the heat-baked ground. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up, especially without knowing where the heck he was going.

The entirely fucked up ground was hard to navigate. End of Story. Or, it would have been the end of Robin's tragic story, if not for a resounding crack, a moment of silence, and a flaring pain in his right arm.

Normally, gunfire marked the end of a saga, given the death that tended to follow closely behind, but this was not the case. His body screamed in protest, and Robin's base instincts told him to fall over and pass out. Luckily, he had spent the last seven years working to override his instincts, and instead of cursing and crying like he desperately wanted to, Robin jackknifed to the left, away from the direct line of fire.

This, as it turned out, was the stupidest decision he could have made. The jungle, which was lush and filled with hiding spots in the direction he had initially been running, became ragged and sparsely populated in his new path.

Green and brush gave way to rock and slate, and Robin was funneled into a small warren of foothills. The path became narrower and narrower between the sloping greens until Robin found himself at the base of the real towering mountain, unable to climb the sheer rock face. Just twenty feet above his head the lush green brambles resumed, but there was to way to reach the relative safety of the mountainside from his current location. Damn. If he were Superboy, he could just jump upward and be home free. Even Kid Flash would have been able to tackle the rock wall, simply running up the face to the freedom that taunted him above. But no, he was the team member with absolutely NO metahuman ability. Lucky him.

Putting his back to the wall and his body poised to fight, Robin turned to face the thugs. They streamed into the warren-like swarms of stylishly dressed ants, each leveling a gun at the young man.

"Alright guys, jokes over," Robin called to the men, his tone light, and bantering. "Let's call this all off and head home for some lemonade. How does that sound? I know this guy gets it!" He chuckled, nodding his head to the nearest soldier, who jerked his gun higher in response to the snark, clearly unamused.

Loose rubble crunched under his heels as he shifted his weight, trying to figure out where the first attack would come from. If he could anticipate the first few waves, he had a better chance of taking down at least a few men before they overwhelmed him. He couldn't take them all, that much was certain; he only had two arms after all.

With a soft "fwip" and a "thunk" of impact, a narrow dart buried itself in Robin's upper thigh.

"Low blow guys! C'mon! Not cool!" The dark haired boy complained, jerking the dart free, and throwing it aside. That was it then: capture by the dart. Not exactly a glorious way to get taken captive, but at least he hadn't slipped and knocked himself out, allowing himself to be captured. KF had done that once, and the team never let him live it down.

Robin wouldn't have to be embarrassed like that...assuming he lived long enough to recount the story. His vision blurred, and as the first line of thugs advanced, Robin slid to the dirt and gravel ground, hoping to high heaven that he didn't drool in his sleep.

[ End Prologue ]


	2. Chapter 2

Semantic-toc Goes the Doomsday Clock

One Hundred and Thirteen times. That's how many times Robin had gone unconscious. Blunt impact, blood loss, poison, sedative darts. He kept count. Normally, the return to consciousness was slow and blurry and involved a lot of less than polite swear words.

This time, however, Robin smashed back to reality with a sudden and jarring breath. The jungle and wilderness he had left behind were replaced with rock and slate and palettes of who-knows-what. His head ached and his arm burned where the bullet had clipped him, but overall, Robin was glad to be alive. That was one thing that never changed; no matter how battered or bruised he was, it was better than being killed.

His arms were tied at his sides, and the cement floor made a lovely reclining couch.

"Is this a 5-star hotel? You guys really went all out! You shouldn't have!" Robin guffawed, shuffling to an upright position, his arms pulling at the ropes.

"Shut up." came the eloquent reply from the leading behemoth, who was holding a small rectangular box. The cube glowed with undermined power, and Robin hoped that whatever it was couldn't hurt too much.

"We're done with this mess. You heroes keep getting in our way. The best way to keep you out of our hair is to get rid of you." grumbled the man, fiddling with the cube as he spoke. "If we leave your body here, Bats will come after us. But if it looks like you're missing, no one's the wiser."

Robin's mind was racing: this was not going well. His toolbelt was twisted in such a way that he couldn't reach any sharp tools with his stretching fingers, so cutting the ropes was a no-go. Before he could attempt any secondary maneuver, the man with the glowing box stomped over and grabbed the back of Robins suit, hefting him into the air like a rag doll.

"Hey hey, buy a fellow dinner first!" he protested, but the large man simply held him up beside the glowy box, continuing his monologue as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"We've got a portal, it'll send you to a lovely little place called Middle Earth. We've been going there for a while now since the stupid creatures don't seem to care if we take their gold and metals," he growled.

"And if you don't have one of these babies," he gestured to a small sphere on his belt that had similar designs to the fancy box, "you're stuck forever. Nifty huh?" he chuckled.

Robin had a problem. Oh sure he was about to be killed and/or irretrievably sent to a different world, but that wasn't the biggest issue.

"That's not a portal."

"What?"

"A portal implies you can go through it both ways. If you can't return without a different device, it's not a portal. More of a sender." Robin informed his captor, his body rotating slowly from the suspending ropes, more concerned about the proper use of certain words than his imminent death at the moment.

"What does it matter?" the man scoffed. "We're going to kill you anyway."

Robin was outraged. "If you're going to kill me, at least call it what it is!"

The man growled and dropped Robin to the floor - ouch - and hit the cube, which began to thrum loudly. As a glowing ball of light enveloped Robin, he couldn't resist throwing one last verbal jab.

"Hey: if you're killing me, are you sending me to death? Because if not, and death is a portal, does that imply people can come back? Dude! Zombies!" he cackled, and got one last satisfying glimpse of the man's crimson twisted face before the world shifted to grey, then green, and then back to black for the second time that day.

One Hundred and Fourteen. Damn. The young man came to in a small bramble bush, the ropes still bound to his torso catching in the small thorns and making it a herculean feat to try and twist free.

Wiggling like a possessed jackrabbit with a penchant for LSD, the young vigilante made a graceless escape from the bushes, flopping towards a small dirt road he could see a few yards away. He could hear voices approaching from further down the path, and his mind raced with possibilities.

Was he actually in another world? Potentially: these things were known to happen occasionally. His mentor and father-figure had world hopped before, so why couldn't Robin. On the off chance that he wasn't in a different world, and the thugs had simply dropped him in some random forest, could he risk allowing civilians to find him in such a vulnerable state? With his hands tied, he would be unable to stop them should they try to remove his mask, and that would be a big uh-oh.

As the voices grew closer, the sound of hooves on dirt and gravel got louder, which served to reinforce the probability of being in another land. This was a less than ideal situation, but Robin wasn't prone to panic, and instead went with the less 'death by starvation on back country road' option, and decided to try for help.

"Hello! HELLO! Over here!" Robin shouted at the top of his lungs, lunging to his knees and waggling his body as a flag-down for whoever was approaching.

As a small platoon of horses and riders rounded the bend, the sudden straightening of the riders made it apparent they had seen him, and Robin breathed a huge sigh of relief as they quickened their pace.

"Hold steady little man, were coming soon." bellowed the fellow in the lead, apparently amused at the apparent state of the young man on the road.

'Oh boy, calling me little, so original' thought Robin, rolling his if he had to endure a few jabs about his height for the sake of being untied, it would be worth it.

The nine riders soon arrived at Robins location, and as they slowed their approach, horses chuffing and stamping, clearly upset to be stopped in an even pace, Robin was struck by something: these men looked different than usual humans.

Shorter. Stockier. More...beardier.

"And how did you get there." asked the (man?) on the lead horse, his large beard and braided plaits reminding Robin of Norse patterns.

"Whos asking?" he replied, his voice surprisingly strong and impertinent for a short boy hogtied on the road at the feet of clearly armed men.

"Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain. Who are you?"

King? What had Robin gotten himself into now?

[ End Chapter ]


	3. Chapter 3

**[ I have not updated in more than a year, but here goes. Thank you to all who have continued to follow this nonsense story.]**

Bindbole Wood? Is that a Swear Word? 

Now, Robin had two options here, neither one particularly better than the other.

He could use his real name, Dick Greyson, and give these...people -the most polite word he could think of- his real identity. Or, he could tell them his hero name, Robin, and keep his identity a secret.

In the end, it didnt really matter, he decided with a shrug (which was hard to manage with his hands tied), since he doubted this was the type of place he was likely to be known.

"I am called Robin, oh Thorin, uh, Oak Man." Robin replied, making his best attempt at a polite greeting.

One of the mounted men snorted heavily (ew) and laughed.

"Robin? Like the bird? Ha!"

Yup, like the bird. Good job, bud.

Thorin swung down from his horse and knelt next to Robin, sliding a small dagger between his wrists and the ropes.

"If we free you, do you promise not to make any trouble?" he asked, his tone making it clear that causing trouble would be a very unwise move for the boy.

"Yes Sir Mr. Thorin Sir." Robin answered in a military bark, grinning at the severity of it all.

With a small "snic" the robes were severed, and Robin stretched his limbs gratefully as he stood, towering over the other man. Now this, he could get use to: Robin was used to being one of the shorter members of his group. But it seemed he stood a good six inches or so taller than Thorin, and boy was it refreshing.

Making his best show of a flamboyant bow, Robin quickly did a mental inventory of what weapons remained on his person. He could feel the knives nestled in the soles of his flexible shoes, and the tool belt still slung around his waist, while devoid of the majority of the fancier looking weapons, still contained the hidden throwing stars, and the portable rebreather that was disguised as the logo on his belt was still firmly in place.

Not bad for having been kidnapped, thrown around, and tossed into another dimension.

"If you would be so kind as to inform us as to why you are bound and alone in the midst of the Bindbole Wood, that would be ever so kind Mister Robin." said a deep voice from the back of the group.

If Robin was told to picture a wizard, this was exactly how the figure would look in his mind. Flowing robes, wooden staff, piercing eyes. It was as if a committee had got together and said "how can we make a man that looks like Dumbledor and a very angry cloud had a kid."

"Bindbole Wood? Is that a swear word?" asked the young man, cocking his head to the side.

"Answer him, lad." piped a fellow with his beard in three short braids.

"That's a long story," began Robin, rubbing the back of his head as if embarrassed, " but to keep things short and sweet," he cringed at the word short, but it didn't seem to cause any offense among the height challenged party, "I was attacked and robbed."

The group still mounted shared some looks, and glanced into the surrounding trees, as if worried whomever had robbed Robin (he was aware of the alliteration) was still lurking in the forest, waiting to ambush them.

"They're long gone. They said something about not wanting to miss the lunch special or something ." Robin hurried to add, gesturing off into the distance to indicate the fake bandits path.

This seemed to ease the collective concern, admittedly with some confusion, and attention returned to Robin.

Whoops. Control Z. Undo.

Offering his most winning smile, Robin came to the uneasy realization that the group of riders had formed a small circle around him, leaving no escape route. Damn. Had all his years of training been knocked out of his head when he was knocked out? Rule #1 of Bruce's instructions (although every rule seemed to be Rule #1 for Robins brooding mentor) was always keep an exit available.

"There is a town nearby. Accompany us there, Mister Robin, and I am sure we can find accommodations for you for the night. Assuming, that is, that you have no other pressing plans." offered the wizard looking man, whom Robin had already mentally dubbed Wizzy, a twinkle of self amusement showing in his shining blue/grey eyes.

Short of the portal (not a portal, he reminded himself) to his own land reappearing, Robin had no other direction to his plans, beyond finding something to eat. Boy howdy was he hungry.

As if in answer to Whizzy's question, Robins stomach gave an almighty growl, and he struck a heroic pose.

"Sounds like fun, Whizzy. Lead the way!" he concluded, figuring things couldn't get any weirder than interdimensional travel and 4 foot tall men. But then again, Robin would tolerate many levels of weird if it meant he got a nice hot meal, so what was the harm in joining this strange group.

Thorin remounted his horse, surprising easily given the length of his limbs, and kicked the creature into an easy trot. The rest of the men(?) followed suit, leaving Robin to jog alongside the group as they returned to the road they had been following before diverting to help Robin.

"What's with yer clothes, Lad? I've not seen those colors, nor that sigil before." asked a bald fellow,riding closest to robin, after they had been traveling in silence for 10 minutes or so.

Robin considered pretending not to have heard him for a moment, not having had time to concoct his cover story yet. A well crafted cover story was like a fine wine, Bruce said, and should be treated with care and finesse. Care and finesse where not Robin's strong suits, though they had temporarily been the names of his fists a few years back.

"I belong to the Noble House of Wayne. We are a tough bunch, and don't Bruce easily." he replied, grinning at his own pun on 'bruise'.

A few mutters of "House of Wayne" bounced around the group as they attempted to recall if they had ever heard of the entirely made up nobility.

As the sun began to set, the group of horses, men, and short-men-like-people, came over a large hill and looked down into a lush green valley. Robin was immediately reminded of the Tella-Tubby's show from his childhood, and muttered "Dipsy" to himself.

"Welcome to Hobbiton, Gentleman." Whizzy announced to the group at large.

He gesturing with his staff to a small hillock set apart from the others with, yes, that was a doors set into the hillside. "That is our Hosts home, where we will set for the night. Come now, make haste, or we will miss Dinner."

That was the magic word, and everyone quickened their pace, eager for a meal.

Robins eyes darted around the valley, cataloguing every piece of information his exhausted brain could manage. The streets were generally deserted, it being Dinner time, as Whizzy had said, but a few figures pulled a wooden cart along a dirt track. They seemed to be even smaller than the group Robin was with, and barefoot to boot. Well, not to boot, given that they were barefoot. Rather, to foot? It didn't matter, and Robin was far too tired to be arguing semantics with himself in his head.

Reaching the indicated door, the group dismounted, and Robin was struck yet again with the odd satisfaction of being the tallest among them, with the exception of Whizzy, who appeared to be a fully grown man. Height contest, 1 point to the gentleman in the spandex and mask.

Whizzy reached out his staff and knocked three times on the circular wooden door.

A moment of silence, then the shuffling of feet, and the door swung open to reveal...a very ugly child?

Nope, it was simply another very small man. This was becoming a trend, Robin could see, and he continued his curiosity in favor of observant silence.

The man's eyes widened as he looked at the large group.

"Oh no, Gandalf. Absolutely not!" he declared, looking equally panicked and confused, his eyes pausing for a moment on Robin, who offered a small wave.

"Bilbo! How nice to see you, old friend!." Previously Whizzy, now Gandalf, replied. His voice was amiable, but his staff had been moved to block the door from closing, should Bilbo decide he didn't want to host the group.

"No, No No!" Bilbo repeated, even as the group began shuffling inside his house, Robin last, and offering a "nice place you got." to the small man. As the door closed behind them, an overwhelming smell of roasted something reached Robins nose, and he lost all interest in being polite, following the others into a small kitchen.

"Now then lads," Thorin spoke, "let us eat, and then we will discuss business."

As long as business did not involve world domination, Robin couldnt give a hoot.

His priorities were in order right then. Food The World.


End file.
